RE: User count

Bruce,

Thanks for all your feedback, and your openness towards this forum.  Very
refreshing.

On a personal note to the rest of the list:  Knowing that Bruce Mac is a man
who benchpresses intermediate sized automobiles just for fun, I think we
should do whatever he says !!!  Kidding aside, I'm going to put my two cents
in on his suggestions, speaking my personal opinion (not necessarily the
opinion of the company that cuts my paycheck) as a 7.5 year JBA veteran now
employed in the user community:

I think any endeavor that helps improve the communication between the users
of a software and the people who design and develop should be loudly
applauded.  I think this list is a good forum for people to feed suggestions
back to the development team, as one person's posted message may trigger
ideas from other users.  It probably makes sense for Bruce, or someone like
him, to act as a liaison and consolidate our opinions before getting
feedback from the developers.

One alternative to this list could be an internet based club (such as in
yahoo, http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/system21virtualusersgroup, as an
example).  This would allow us to actually interact real time with other
users.  

As noble as the offer for Geac to sponsor this discussion is, I think it's
vital that the forum remains on neutral ground, in order to promote honesty
and openness.

On a somewhat separate topic, you mentioned that "the efforts and thoughts
you are
putting forward are seen and heard in the Geac community".  Any response
(from anyone) on the consistent negative messages that's been posted about
the source code policy?

Just one man's opinions,

Stefan Jansson
Fossil
Dallas, TX

-----Original Message-----
From: bmcintyre@jbana.com [mailto:bmcintyre@jbana.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 1:17 PM
To: JBAUSERS-L@midrange.com
Cc: Ian_X_Evans%JBA@jbana.com
Subject: RE: User count


Here is a response from Ian Evans on the issue of User Counts. Ian is the
development manager responsible for System Manager along with other
products. Ian's offer to engage in one on one conversations with any
interested parties needs to be moderated a little.

If anyone wants to further discuss this with Ian one on one please forward
me your additional questions and I will, with Ian, construct a distribution
group. If the list prefers we can attempt to address the questions through
the list with Ian providing responses and my forwarding them.

I am interested in exploring further the concept of providing access to
developers to the members of this list. I feel this could be an excellent
opportunity to develop some communications for you directly with the
authors of the package. Could members please post whether or not they want
me to act as an intermediary in this regard? Or please comment on whether
or not having the development managers on this list would be beneficial.

I am conscious of the need to keep the list a user controlled environment.
However, sitting between your questions and the software authors I feel
there is a real opportunity to enhance our collective communications. And
for you to get answers straight from the developers. One of the development
managers biggest complaints while I was running that organization was a
lack of customer contact. I think this list or a similar device could solve
that problem.

If this is not an appropriate list I can very quickly set up a developers
contact list that Geac could sponsor.

A lot of different thoughts there, but please read and respond. Despite
what you might think to the contrary the efforts and thoughts you are
putting forward are seen and heard in the Geac community.

Bruce McIntyre
VP Product Strategy

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